By C.S. Lewis
Those of us who toss about the word "love" the way a speculator does penny stock need -- for the sake of love -- to spend time with C.S. Lewis. In The Four Loves, Lewis exegetes four kinds of human love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity.
About the author:
Clive Stables Lewis (1898-1963) was a twentieth-century literary titan. Lewis taught at Oxford until 1954 and then was the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University for the rest of his career. His writings span the allegorical, (The Chronicles of Narnia has sold more than 100 million copies in over 4o languages, and has been re-created in three films); science fiction, (e.g. Out of the Silent Planet and The Great Divorce); satirical (The Screwtape Letters), and discipleship (The Problem of Pain). Lewis "was a man with friends," keeping company with the Inklings, a group of fellow writers, which included J.R.R. Tolkien.
What the The Four Loves is about:
I am hesitant to attempt a summary. When one of the most gifted and creative minds devotes 180 pages to four words, how can anyone provide an appropriate abridgement. Oh well, with that caveat . . . here goes. Lewis begins and ends his treatise differentiating Gift-love and Need-love. "Our Gift-loves are really God-like; and among our Gift-loves those are most God-like which are most boundless and unwearied in giving" (9). Lewis will expound four kinds of love:
1. Affection (storge):
Affection is the humblest love. It gives itself no airs. "It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog's tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine, a gollywog left on the lawn" (45). "Affection ... creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to simile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who 'happen to be there'" (49).
"Affection at its best can say whatever Affection at its best wishes to say, regardless of the rules that govern public courtesy; for Affection at its best wishes neither to wound nor to humiliate nor to domineer" (57).
2. Friendship (philia):
"True Friendship is the least jealous of loves" (78)." It is perceived as something quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet; a diversion; something that fills up the chinks of one's time but it is rich. "Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest" (78).
Some want to treat every firm and serious friendship as homosexual. About this error, Lewis writes, "Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend" (77). I appreciated Lewis comments about those who say, "I only want a Friend." He notes that no friendship can arise there because friendship "must be about something" (85). I am grateful for all his work on love, but particularly for Lewis's treatment of Friendship, about which he notes we could not arrange of ourselves: "A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work" (114).
3. Eros:
Lewis writes, "By Eros I mean of course that state which we call 'being in love'; or, if you prefer, that kind of love which lovers are 'in" (117). Sexuality is a part of this kind of love, but not the whole of it. "That sexual experience can occur without Eros, without being 'in love', and that Eros includes other things besides sexual activity" (117). Lewis will differentiate between Eros (being 'in love', and Venus (the carnal or animally sexual element within Eros). "Sexuality may operate without Eros or as part of Eros" (118). "Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved." His comments regarding that, particularly on page 121, were very helpful. Make sure you spend some time absorbing his comments on "Brother Ass" (129).
"Eros never hesitates to say, 'Better this than parting. Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our heats break provided they break together.' If the voice within us does not say this, it is not the voice of Eros" (137).
4. Charity:
Charity is the love of God. "The loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that they cannot even remain themselves and do what they promise to do without God's help. . . . they 'are taller when the bow'" (152). "We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. . . . Only the lovable can be naturally loved. . . . Thus God, admitted to the human heart, transforms not only Gift-love but Need-love; not only our Need-love of Him, but our Need-love of one another" (170).
My Recommendation:
The Four Loves is a hard read, but not because Lewis employs his formidable vocabulary (which I suspect will challenge some) or because his explanatory allusions and illustrations arise from a literary/historical genre foreign to many. It is a hard read because Lewis is willing to take us deep into the caverns of "love," to trace the veins of the familiar to depths unexamined. Platitudes and clichés are not to be found here. Lewis is examining 100 Proof Love. These pages are the work of a sommelier, a man with the eye of a diamond grader, the acumen of a theologian, and the appreciation of a critic in awe.
When discussing Charity, Lewis writes about "need love," that it is a strange grace. "But I cannot get it out of my head (italics mine) that this is what happens" (166). To me, this is what makes The Four Loves delightfully difficult and such an important book. Lewis, the contemplator of the magical, mystical, and theological has thought long and hard and is kindly sharing those thoughts with us -- that which is both obvious and mysterious, both linear and dynamic, both common and divine. Read it. He may just cause you to chose a different expression the next time you are ready to utter a breezy, "I love pizza."
A few points to ponder:
1. On loving too much:
To those who suggest we can love someone too much, Lewis notes, "It is probably impossible to love any human being simply 'too much'. We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy." The real question he suggests is, "which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?" (156-157)
If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife . . . and his own children, he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26
2. On patriotism:
Given the political rancor in the U.S., chapter two, "Likings And Loves For The Sub-Human" was insightful and thought-provoking. Lewis outlines fives unique faces of patriotism. At one point he writes, "If our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world" (37).
3. On pampering:
This was a minor point, but it caught my attention. "This terrible need to be needed often finds its outlet in pampering an animal" (67). Worth the read and reflection.
4. On being loved by God:
"No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable. . . . It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us." (166-67).
5. On the "secret" to really loving others:
"Man can ascend to Heaven only because the Christ, who died and ascended to Heaven, if 'formed in him'. Must we not suppose that the same is true of man's loves?" (174).
Quotes worth sharing:
1. Love and rivalry: The rivalry between all natural loves and the love of God is something a Christian dare not forget (50).
2. The meaning of love: I still think that if all we mean by our love is craving to be loved, we are in a very deplorable state (2).
3. On Friendship: It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities (90).
4. On the necessity of supernatural love to fuel natural love: William Morris wrote a poem called 'Love is Enough' and someone is said to have reviewed it briefly in the words, 'It isn't.' Such has been the burden of this book. The natural loves are not self-sufficient (149).
5. On the dangers in love: The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell (156).